Shy girl playing hard to get vs not interested?

[Anonymous]

Could you help me out here? Any specific signs and body language would be greatly appreciated. there's this girl that is giving me mixed signals. She is usually shy and sweet and can be a little sarcastic but when we talk that little sarcastic can turn into a LOT and she is playfully mean to me and have zingers waiting for me when I say something (well, its a mutual thing, we are always teasing each other) and our friends tell us we are like kids. She is younger than me and never had a boyfriend and even if I don't get too flirty if I ask her things like, I don't know, "have you missed me?" she will get all serious and say NO but then she will start giggling when I say "oh, I see" and if we end up just me and her she will get kinda nervous and quiet but she is not like that with others. She will "miss" others and be very nice and she doesn't really seem too nervous around them, she will laugh at their jokes but not at my attempts at humor(she has flat out told me I'm lame, even though her friends find me hilarious). On a side note, when I talk to her she always has this cheesy smile and people have noticed that she smiles a lot also. Recently she got braces and I thought it would be nice to get her a greeting card and put in it that she has the most beautiful smile in the world and ever since then she smiles a lot more, but I don't know if my card had anything to do with it or its just a coincidence lol. Thanks for the advice.

[SkyBlossom]

There are shy girls who play hard to get, and then there are the normal girls, and worse more the bitchy cruel maneater girls. Of course it's possible she could be uninterested, but not from what you've said here. She strikes me as a girl who is intelligent and trying not to show her inexperience when it comes to guys. She's never had a boyfriend right? Well she's probably read a lot and isn't dumb about guys, but still she wants to be unawkward, she wants to seem in control, and she might be coming off as hot and cold in some instances. She's trying to do a poker face kind of thing so that you think of her as she wants to be seen; she might want you to see her as a greta garbo, an audrey hepburn, because she liked to be thought of as mysterious, hard to get, but playful, available, warm, and vulnerable. She sounds young, how young we talking about? Well I think she definitely wants you, but with how she is acting...why don't you respond with assertiveness? When a girl is this whipped by a guy that she isn't being assertive about asking him out herself, it's time for the guy to recognize that its his time to step up. I mean that in the nicest way possible. It's your move, don't be afraid, ask this girl out.

[Asker]

She is 22 and I'm 27. I know what you mean, she always tries to put up this serious demeanor when she talks to me, like nothing I do will ever get to her but I know (and she has told me) that I know how to push her buttons and find me "very annoying". She is always talking back at me and making fun of me and sometimes I feel like she is trying "not to like me", even simple compliments like "you are funny" I will never hear from her, but the way she smiles and looks at me tells me otherwise.

[SkyBlossom]

Yeah she needs to stop playing games because she is really playing herself, and she might lose you soon enough with this pretty douchey behavior. How long have you known each other and has she been acting this way? Her behavior should wear off eventually. I mean you guys need to be real with each other. Fooling around, teasing each other is fine, but she has to give it up and be comfortable with expressing her true feelings about you sooner or later. At her core, probably doesn't want to get hurt.